


Family Portrait

by liketolaugh



Series: Lullaby for the Taken [3]
Category: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Link (Legend of Zelda) Needs a Hug, Link (Legend of Zelda) Uses Sign Language, Nonverbal Link (Legend of Zelda), Panic Attacks, Protective Zelda (Legend of Zelda), Zelda (Legend of Zelda) is a Good Bro, link cries like a baby in this one and tbh that's all you need to know
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-15
Updated: 2021-02-15
Packaged: 2021-03-17 10:35:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29470299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liketolaugh/pseuds/liketolaugh
Summary: A hundred years ago, a mother with two children who cannot speak commissions a bracelet for each of them, so they can show it to people if they need help.Today, Link brings his sister's bracelet to Zelda and asks if she knows who it belongs to.(Sometimes it seems like every day Link learns of something else that he's lost - something else his amnesia cost him, something else consumed by the Calamity, something else that isgone.)
Relationships: Link & Zelda (Legend of Zelda)
Series: Lullaby for the Taken [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2160501
Comments: 6
Kudos: 90





	Family Portrait

Tucked away in a box underneath the staircase, Link had a small collection of things he’d picked up and kept, but didn’t really have any use for. There weren’t a lot of them; he had a use for most things, and eventually sold or tossed most others. But it happened sometimes.

One of them was a battered little wooden horse, the paint worn away with time and the head gnawed up by lizalfos teeth. He’d found it in the cart that lay abandoned in the middle of the Bridge of Hylia, with a few other toys around it, most of them barely recognizable as such.

There was a pretty jeweled brooch too, opal and diamond and broken. He’d found it in a monster camp near the Maritta Exchange ruins, abandoned and trampled and forgotten, but too beautiful to leave behind.

And there was a bracelet. It was twisted and tarnished, and he’d had to wash it in the Spring of Courage for hours before the malice dissolved enough to touch without burning himself. Most of it was thin chain, blackened with age, but there was a dainty little plate, too, just wide enough for an inscription.

_Grace Hallowell – I am Deaf, I use sign._

There were two indents on either side of the text where he thought little sparkling jewels might once have rested, but if so, they were long gone.

It was the bracelet that was the oddest one, but he couldn’t bear to abandon it.

Link had found it on the body of a lizalfos – one of the silver ones that lived in the castle library. He had noticed it right away; it wasn’t uncommon for silver monsters to wear trophies off the bodies of the Hylians they’d killed, but it was _that_ one that he noticed, the flash on its wrist and the shape of the bracelet.

In a fit of surreal, blind rage, Link had killed that lizalfos so messily that its parts were unsalvageable, and then he’d cut off its hand at the wrist, and taken the bracelet off it, and he’d put it in his slate. Then he’d _kicked the lizalfos around a little more,_ and only then had he finally moved on.

And then the next blood moon had arrived, and he thought of that lizalfos. He did all of his rounds first – cleaned up the Lurelin and Hateno beaches, cleared the road in front of Highland Stable, killed the hinox blocking the way to the desert and the octoroks on the way to Rito Stable…

But when he was done with all of that, he went back to the castle and he looked for that lizalfos, and he found it, and he killed it with just as much prejudice as he had the first time.

And then he did it again the next blood moon.

Then the next.

Every blood moon up to and including the last, the cycles still recurring three months after Calamity Ganon’s defeat, Link had gone and found that lizalfos. By now it had started fleeing from him, and he still didn’t let it go. He couldn’t. He hated the damned thing so much it _burned._

And he still didn’t know why.

His mind wandered that way while he was braiding Zelda’s hair one morning, half-listening to her murmur her morning prayers under her breath, the same ones he’d recited silently a half-hour earlier when he did his own. He thought first of breakfast, the rice porridge and honey his body always moved to make when his mind was lingering too much on the past, and then, for some reason, he thought of the bracelet too.

If anyone knew who Grace Hallowell was, Link was sure Zelda would.

He patted her shoulder when he was done, and she finished her last recitation to turn around and smile at him. It fell immediately into a more thoughtful expression as she regarded him, and before he could even move to ask the question, she beat him to it.

“What is it?”

Link almost smiled at her, small and fond. He still wasn’t sure how close they’d been a hundred years ago, even by the end, but now… Now, he wasn’t sure there was anyone in the world he trusted more. Or who knew him better.

_Can I ask you a question about the past?_ he asked bluntly.

Her expression shuttered, but it was with clear resolve that she turned to face him properly and replied, “Of course.”

He nodded, more to himself than to her, and turned around to duck under the stairway. He rummaged around for a minute, opened the box of lost and broken treasures with care, and took out the bracelet. He returned to his seat with it a minute later and held it out, and Zelda obediently took it, turning it over in her hands.

Her expression was transforming before Link even brought his hands up, and it was with stricken eyes that she watched him ask, _Do you know who that belonged to?_

Zelda. Squeaked.

Then, while he watched, she swallowed thickly. Opened her mouth to try to speak. Closed it again, swallowed, and then, with even more care than Link had treated it with, she set the bracelet on the table beside them.

Closed her eyes. Took a deep breath. Opened them, met his worried gaze, and lifted her hands.

Zelda signed to him, _You’re the youngest of four siblings. You have three older sisters. E-l-o-i-s-e, G-r-a-c-e, and M-a-r-i-a-n-a H-a-l-l-o-w-e-l-l._

Link stared at her blankly. His ears started to ring, his head echoing like something was pounding on it from the far distance, making it shake.

_Grace was your favorite sister,_ Zelda continued after a long and painful moment, smiling like it hurt, like she was trying to be brave and strong for him. _She was Deaf and she worked in the castle library. She was nine years older than you. She gave you your sign name, Honey Nut, when you were very young, for the color of your hair._

Zelda paused, clearly trying to think of more, but Link’s face was already going slack and distant.

Link.

Remembered.

(When Link was very young, he’d once wandered off to a familiar woodland area, one he recognized as the one around the Sacred Ground. He’d gathered the endura shrooms that grew there until his sister found him.)

(His sister had pinched him on the tip of his ear, so gently it didn’t hurt, and when he turned around she had been smiling at him, crinkle-eyed and affectionate.)

_(How did I know I’d find you here?_ she’d asked him, kneeling in the dirt to reach eye level with him. _It couldn’t be that you always come out here when you’re craving mushroom omelets, could it? Surely you wouldn’t be so silly.)_

(And with his short little arms still full, he’d tried to answer her, bouncing and excited about something, his little chest bursting with adoration.)

(Grace had laughed, and she had signed to him, _Don’t sign with your hands full, honey nut, I can’t understand you. Let’s get you home. Mom’s been worried.)_

Link.

Gasped, short and harsh. Blinked.

Zelda had fallen silent, watching him with round, anxious eyes. He stared back at her, his chest suddenly feeling tight, his ears ringing loud enough to drown out anything else he might hear. He took a breath to make sure he still could.

_What was her name?_ he asked blankly.

_G-r-a-c-e,_ Zelda fingerspelled gently, slow and deliberate, like she thought he might be too out of it to follow along. He shook his head.

_What was her name?_ he repeated, feeling his hands threaten to shake. Something roared in the back of his mind, like the rumble of a lynel in the distance.

“Grace,” Zelda said aloud, trying to pull a curtain over her growing worry, still just as gentle and patient as she always was when it came to his memory.

Link shook his head again. He couldn’t breathe; his chest was too tight. He gasped, short and sharp, and felt something in himself crack dangerously. _No, not that, her name, please, what was her name?_

Why couldn’t he remember her name? Why could Link suddenly remember her face, wide nose and thick eyebrows and red hair, and not her goddess-damned name? He’d remembered Mipha’s and Daruk’s and Revali’s and Urbosa’s and _Zelda’s,_ why, why didn’t he remember Grace’s?

_I can’t remember her name,_ he signed, a frantic hysteria clamping down on his racing heart. _I can’t remember her name. Why can’t I remember her name?_

Zelda said something else out loud, but he couldn’t hear her over the ringing, and he was starting to hyperventilate, grasping at straws, searching Zelda’s face for answers he knew he couldn’t find in himself. He remembered Zelda’s father scolding her and the ceremony to anoint him as champion and listening to her pray at the Spring of Courage and _why couldn’t he remember his sister’s fucking name?_

He couldn’t breathe. Link whined, thin and stressed, a sound he’d never heard himself make before and Zelda looked frightened.

“Grace, her name was Grace,” Zelda repeated, so far away he could barely make it out, with a helplessness that said she didn’t understand but had to _try._ She reached up to cup his face, forcing his focus on her, and he hiccupped, letting her.

Link shook his head furiously, distantly aware of hot tears starting to spill down his cheeks. ‘Grace’ was what people who used their fucking mouths called her, what did _he_ call her, what was her _name?_

_Name name name name,_ he chanted childishly, like that would make Zelda understand him. He was sobbing now, erratic and pitiful, and he didn’t stop until Zelda dropped her hands and wrapped them around his, silencing him. Link keened, but didn’t try to pull away.

He didn’t know why this was so important. He didn’t understand why he couldn’t stop crying. Why he was wailing like a baby until his stomach churned with nausea, struggling to breathe between gasps.

Link didn’t do that. Link didn’t cry like that. Link didn’t _cry._

Link wasn’t supposed to break down like this, and definitely not over a _single goddess-damned namesign._

Zelda was clearly starting to panic too, and she said a few more things but Link’s comprehension had gone out the window. After a while she gave up, and in a screech of chair legs she shoved herself closer, let go of Link’s hands, and pulled him into a tight hug, her arms looping over his shoulders to pull him close.

Link let himself tip forward, clung to her, and sobbed, fingers twisting into her dress. Every time he tried to make himself stop, he didn’t do more than tremble for a second or two before he was crying again, harder than before. Twice he gagged, making Zelda flinch, and had to swallow the bile back down before he could embarrass himself even more.

Zelda let him, though, holding him tightly and starting to sway back and forth, stiff and unsure. She hummed a few wavering, uncertain bars, then stopped, then started again. Just as his fingertips were starting to tingle from the hyperventilation, she started to murmur instead, shifting her grip so she could rub his back in slow circles.

“Shh. Shh. It’s okay. It’s okay. Shh.”

It took Link a long time to stop crying.

He didn’t know how long, except that by the time he did his stomach was rumbling for food, and his throat hurt from overuse, and his scarred skin burned for what seemed like no reason at all. It died down slowly, in stages, from sobbing to whimpers to hiccups, and it was only when the hiccups mellowed into shaky, deep breaths that Zelda finally, carefully pulled away.

Link let her, wrung out and exhausted, and instantly missed her warmth. Cheeks still wet, he looked up when he caught motion, and Zelda signed to him, slow and gentle like he hadn’t just eaten up her whole morning, _Are you okay?_

He swallowed. Swallowed.

He shook his head.

Zelda’s expression softened into worry and sympathy, and she hesitated, then licked her lips and signed, _I’m not good at cooking. Is it okay if I go and ask the inn cook to make porridge? And we can add honey here._

Rice porridge with honey was Link’s favorite comfort food.

_I love you,_ he signed shakily, and then, _Okay._

Zelda hesitated, and then gave him a brave smile and added, _Count the wood boards until I get back. I promise to be back before you’re done. Start with the top of the back wall. Tell me how far you get._

Lost and numb, Link obeyed, eyes trailing sluggishly over the wooden surfaces.

He turned when he heard the door open again, surprised to see Zelda back already, holding two bowls of porridge in bowls from the inn.

_Fifty-eight,_ he told her, without expanding on how many times he’d lost count.

“That’s wonderful, Link,” she said softly, sounding oddly sincere. She set one bowl in front of him, the other across, and then went to the kitchen and grabbed the jar of honey and two spoons to bring back.

She added the honey to his bowl for him and then set it aside, and then she watched him until he took a bite. Only then did she start eating, looking so distracted he doubted she even tasted it.

He closed his eyes and ate for a while. Rice porridge with honey had always tasted like home. He wondered if Grace had ever made it for him.

Only when Link’s stomach stopped complaining, halfway through the bowl, did he open his eyes again. Zelda was already finished, watching him with clear worry, and he took a deep, steadying breath, and slowly put his spoon down.

_I wondered,_ he signed, slow and deliberate so his trembling hands wouldn’t make him unintelligible, _if you knew. What her sign name was._

“Oh,” Zelda breathed, and then, thinner and faintly cracked, _“Oh._ Oh, Link, I’m so sorry.”

Link didn’t reply, and when Zelda didn’t go on, apparently wracking her own memory, he picked up his spoon and ate a little more. It tasted like ash. Finally, Zelda shook her head, looking like she was holding onto composure by her fingertips.

“I’m sorry, Link,” she repeated quietly. “I… I don’t remember, either.”

She sounded as defeated as Link felt. Oddly, that made him feel a little better.

He deflated, poking at his food halfheartedly, and after a minute, Zelda got up. He tilted his head up to watch her go to the stove, falter, and then hunt down the Sheikah slate just to take two bottles of milk from it.

She heated it on the stove, poured them back into their bottles, and returned to the table, setting one down across from him and adding honey to it without asking. Then she took hers and drank from it deeply, gulping it down.

Link picked his up and drank from it, slow and shaky.

_Hurts,_ he signed hesitantly, because he felt raw and exposed, and his skin hurt, and Zelda was just sitting there, making everything better.

“Ralis root or lavender?” she asked without hesitation, and he made a vague gesture to the former, so she went to get it, and spent another few minutes in the kitchen before she returned with a spoonful of crushed ralis root for him to take.

He did, washing it down with milk, and then finished his food. Then he looked back up at Zelda, subconsciously searching for guidance.

Zelda smiled at him, small and shaky, and said quietly, “How about we go outside to sit by the pond for a while. You can take a nap there if you get tired. And at some point today, if you’re up to it, I can go talk to Bolson and Karson, and let them know you’re having a bad day and would like it if they visited for dinner.”

None of her suggestions processed as questions to Link’s sluggish mind, and he nodded, exhausted and sore. Attention flicking lethargically from item to item, he finally settled on the bracelet that had started all of this, picked it up, and turned it over in his hands, delicate and trembling.

_Grace Hallowell – I am Deaf, I use sign._

The gems set on either side of the text had been red, like her hair.

“You had one of those, too,” Zelda said, still very quiet, making Link look up. She smiled at him, eyes red-rimmed and gentle. When had she cried? “Purah may have it. I can go ask if you want.”

Link nodded again, and turned the bracelet over in his hands.

He put it on.

_Let’s go,_ he signed impulsively, even though he knew it had to be obvious that he’d been crying, even though he was still stretched-thin and shaky and struggling to communicate. He wanted to go. _Pond after._

Zelda hesitated, looking him up and down, but then squared her shoulders and nodded.

It turned out to be fairly late in the morning, so there were plenty people out and about, but none of them rude enough to ask about Zelda guiding Link subtly by the hand. Link didn’t look at anyone but Zelda, staying half a step behind, one foot in front of the other, the harsh, pulling sting in his skin only just starting to die down.

(He didn’t remember it being this hard while he was traveling.)

Zelda knocked twice briskly on the door and barely waited for Purah’s call before entering, pulling Link in afterward. Purah was at her usual table, not bothering to look up, and Symin was nowhere to be seen.

Link gently tugged his hand away from Zelda’s, walked to stand beside Purah, and let out a soft, hoarse grunt. She looked up, one eyebrow raised.

He held out the wrist with- with the bracelet. She stared at it.

Then, without a word, she bolted, almost tumbling off the stool in her haste. It looked like she knew exactly what he wanted and where it was, because she beelined for a particular bookshelf, stared up at it, and then turned and stomped her foot. “SYMIN!”

Thundering footsteps preceded Symin’s arrival by about thirty seconds, the man frantically making his way down. It took him only a moment to absorb the scene, and then he turned towards Purah, clearly confused and a little exasperated. “What is-”

Purah stomped her foot again. “Top shelf!”

Symin shook his head, clearly bemused, but obediently went and lifted Purah up by her underarms, where she fumbled around, knocking several things over by the sound of it, and finally produced a small, ornate box. She kicked Symin in the elbow, and Symin sighed, letting her down.

Without another word, she darted back, flipped onto her stool, and presented the box to Link, her hands shaking slightly but her expression so stubborn it would definitely be better not to mention it.

She didn’t apologize. But after that display, she didn’t really need to.

Link was hyperaware of Zelda coming up behind him to watch as he carefully opened the box. Sure enough, there was a small bracelet inside, almost good as new except for a few places where repairs were clearly visible.

He picked it up gingerly, set the box aside, and turned it over, slow and tremulous.

_Link Hallowell – I do not speak, I use sign._

It still had one of its gems. It was green.

He nodded, put it on with… with the other one, and signed, _Thank you._

Purah nodded stiffly, and then gave him a dazzling, _forced_ smile. “You betcha! That thing was kind of a mess when I picked it off ya, you know, but it looked important, so I, uh, I figured…” She was fidgeting with her screwdriver now, looking childishly guilty the way she sometimes couldn’t quite hide.

_Thank you,_ he repeated, and then nodded to Symin, and then left.

Zelda stayed for a few more moments, probably speaking to Purah, but she caught up in only a minute to touch his elbow and speak softly.

“Pond?” she asked.

_Pond,_ Link echoed. He touched the two bracelets. _Gerudo jeweler?_

“That’s a wonderful idea, Link,” Zelda said. “We can go whenever you want.”

Link gave her an exhausted, but grateful smile.

He didn’t know what he would do without her.

**Author's Note:**

> Grace's sign name is 'g-giggle' - the letter G used to gesture to a giggling mouth. I don't usually like to tie ASL to Hylian sign, but I liked this enough to keep it.
> 
> It's worth mentioning that both of Link's major reactions here - his hatred for the lizalfos and his breakdown in this fic - are not exclusively for his sister but rather manifestations of ALL of his grief and (in the former case) rage over the massive losses he's suffered. That poor lizalfos.
> 
> Eventually Bolson and Karson will come over, and Link will cook everyone dinner, and Bolson and Karson will bicker over interior decorating until they manage to make Link laugh.
> 
> (Much later, Link and Zelda will visit Isha, and Link will ask her to hook the two bracelets together and inscribe 'in memory' on the back of Grace's. It's not the first memento she's been asked to make and it won't be the last.)


End file.
